This invention relates to test or investigation of a service function of an intelligent network and, more particularly, to a method of and a device for testing, as regards an originating call to be investigated, connection information in the intelligent network primarily as a route which the originating call transits through.
In the intelligent network, a telecommunication network is provided with intelligence, such as a control data base and a communication controlling processor, to combine the intelligence with a plurality of exchanges of various hierarchies, such as end centers, toll centers, sectional centers, and regional centers, dispersed in the telecommunication network. The intelligent network thereby raises receive capabilities of the telecommunication network.
As an example of services of the intelligent network, attention will be directed to a free dial service. A calling subscriber initiates an originating call by dialing a destination or called phone number as a logical number rather than as a physical number. Responsive to the originating call, an exchange refers to a conversion table kept in the data base so as to translate the logical number into the physical number, which the exchange uses in establishing an actual connection. It is possible in such a case to use the logical number in common to a plurality of source localities where the originating call is initiated. It therefore follows even when one and the same logical number is dialed on different occasions by the calling subscriber or by different calling attendants in various source localities that the logic number is translated dependent on the source localities into various physical numbers which may be in different destination localities and one of which the actual connection is established at a time through a geographic routing in the intelligent network.
In view of the foregoing, it is necessary to test such a service function of the intelligent network by investigating whether or not entries are correct in the data base and conversion or translation is correctly carried out. According to prior art, a number of state transitions or call connection data are accumulated, as call log information data, as regards their sources and destinations so as to make it possible in response to a display request command to display one of the state transitions that is requested by the command as a call connection datum.
For example, disclosed in Japanese Patent Prepublication (A) No. 83,375 of 1993 is an idea wherein the exchange makes a service control point (SCP) convert the logical number to a translated number and deals with the actual connection of the calling phone number to the translated number. The service control point serves as the intelligence and comprises an electronic digital computer composed of the data base and the communication controlling processor. Test of the geographical routing is carried out centrally at a predetermined one of the exchanges as regards the originating call that is delivered to an exchange in any locality. Incidentally, the translated number may be dependent on a time zone datum including a time instant at which the called phone number is dialed.
In a conventional call information testing method and a conventional device therefor described in the foregoing, it is indispensable for display of correspondence between the call connection datum of the originating call and a service scenario descriptive of the service function to manually desktopwise draw a locus on a sheet of paper on which the service scenario is preliminarily printed. As a consequence, it has been impossible to quickly visualize the call connection datum. This has given rise to a problem such that quick visual understandings are impossible as regards errors in the service scenario and an incorrect route which the originating call may run through. Another problem is such that maintenance of the intelligent network is deteriorated.